Shared Opinion

11 July 2009

The worry is not that the new head of MI6 is on Facebook. It’s that he looked such a berk

Or possibly Livingstone, by Lake Tanganyika. Or some genteel suburb in Zimbabwe, or Kenya, or the hills of Swaziland or Lesotho, or South Africa’s Drakensberg, or the Hogsback Hills down south. Or Uganda maybe, but I’ve never been there. I was in one of those higher, cooler bits of Africa that those doughty Scottish explorers found, and fell in love with, and tried to recast as home. Where the scrub on the hillside is just somehow wrong, and the sheep are too thin, and yellowish, and restless. Where you’ll see a startling country house, but made out of the wrong stone, or a man in the sea fog with a stick and a kilt, when it is actually jungle fog and he’s holding a knobkerrie and wearing a blanket. A backwards sort of familiarity. Scotland reminding me of the places that are supposed to remind you of it.

I find it strange that people feel entitled to have views on climate change. Seems straight science to me — either it is or it isn’t. Me, I haven’t a clue. Maybe this was just freaky weather. It felt, though, like a glimpse of the future. One day, the bugs will be as big as your hand. Up here, even by the River Esk, we will all have verandahs.